LMIS garden gets new home
A new school construction project is an exciting thing, but sometimes that excitement comes with a little sadness.
The school addition currently under construction at Little Miami Intermediate School will eventually provide new classroom space for all of the district’s second and third graders. But because of the configuration of the project, those new classrooms are being built on the site of the LMIS school garden, which has become a beloved feature of the building over the past several years.
While it might have been a little easier to let the bulldozers plow the garden under and walk away, LMIS school counselor Dawn Gasper, who has led the garden project for several years, decided the garden would grow on.
With help from students, volunteers from the Warren County master gardeners’ program, retired teachers and donations from several generous donors, the garden’s plants have new homes elsewhere on the LMIS school site.
Many of the garden’s perennials have been transplanted into existing beds around the school or in the bed by the school’s sign at the corner of Zoar and Stephens Roads. This latter project came with its own set of challenges, as there is no water by the sign. During the first couple of months of school this year, Gasper and student volunteers ran “bucket brigades” from the school out to the sign to keep the plants watered until they could re-establish in their new home.
This garden project dovetailed nicely with a second one that Gasper has been working on for two years: The sprucing up of the building’s front entrance. This area got a facelift with a new perennial bed that is registered with the Cincinnati Zoo as an official pollinator garden. It also got a crowning jewel: a 700-pound engraved rock, made possible with donations from the LMIS PTO and Greenfield Plant Farm in Maineville.
“I was so happy with the end product and the fact that we were able to finally make it happen,” said Gasper. “This has been in the works for two years and I had assistance from so many people.”
Now visitors to the building can enjoy the large rock, and dozens of smaller rocks, all painted by LMIS art students.
